


Keeping Warm

by AwashSquid



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 09:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17639876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwashSquid/pseuds/AwashSquid
Summary: An AU of the first season finale, if Neptune and Uranus had been awoken with the Inners.





	Keeping Warm

**Author's Note:**

> This was my submission to the Tumblr Sparkle Sparkle 2019 exchange! The prompt I chose was "keeping warm," and I kind of ran with it.
> 
> This picks up right after Rei dies at D-Point and goes from there.

Haruka had never been angrier about her Senshi uniform being a miniskirt than she was at that moment.

The cold bit into her exposed legs with such fierceness that each step sent a shockwave of searing pain throughout her lower half. The wind seemed to have been able to penetrate beyond her soft flesh and into the deepest recesses of the hard bones that lay beneath, encasing them with a freezing grip.

Her gloved hands were numb, and she kept flexing them so that they wouldn’t lose all feeling. She glanced to Michiru at her left and saw that she was doing her own delicate version of the same instinct, her fingertips fluttering as though playing an invisible violin, tiny white butterflies flitting back and forth in a dance so captivating that she had to remind herself to look elsewhere. 

Her gaze moved to Michiru’s face, paler than usual, cheeks uncharacteristically blushed and lips red as though painted, looking to Haruka like the most tempting forbidden fruit, and oh, she wished she had thought to taste them, to try and take a bite before they had come to this, because she knew now that they would not be going home again, not ever, and she wished with an aching fervor that she had mustered the courage to kiss the girl she loved before she died.

She turned back to look towards the endless expanse of white stretching ahead, eyes straining to see past the blowing snowflakes. She heard nothing but the wind’s loud howl mingled with Sailor Moon’s cries from behind her, her usual wailing sobs replaced by a guttural heaving that was becoming more difficult to ignore. She felt her hands tighten into fists and whirled around before she had a chance to think better of it.

“Would you _stop_ already?” Haruka barked, her voice hoarse from the cold. Sailor Moon blinked up at her with Usagi’s eyes, streaked red and watery, her face an expression of shock as though she had been slapped. “We need to focus. The enemy could be anywhere, and I can’t hear a damn thing with you going on like that.”

“Uranus,” Michiru murmured in her ear, closer than Haruka realized she had been, three syllables managing to be both a warning and an agreement.

Sailor Moon gulped loudly and wiped her nose with the back of her glove, already visibly stiffened from the dried tears and snot. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, quieter than her voice had ever been, so soft that it was almost carried away on the wind like one of so many snowflakes in the air. “It- it’s just that–”

“Look, I get it,” Haruka cut her off. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry they’re gone, but you can grieve later. Right now, we _must_ complete the Mission. Nothing else can matter.”

Sailor Moon’s mouth opened to protest, but Neptune took a step forward, edging slightly in front of Uranus. “It’s not that their lives do not matter, Sailor Moon.” Her voice was soft but strong, slicing through the wind with the precision of a knife. “What Uranus means is that we cannot allow their sacrifices to be in vain. And if you become consumed by grief at this point, it becomes that much easier for the enemy to win, and they will have died for nothing.”

Sailor Moon had flinched at the word “died” as though struck, her eyes cast downward like a child being scolded. A long moment of silence sat between them, heavy with the weight of the bodies that were left to freeze, beautiful corpses forever preserved in their burial shrouds of ice.

“You’re right.” She wiped her nose and eyes one more time, then met Uranus’s gaze, her expression determined. “We _have_ to win. They wouldn’t want me to give up. Rei-chan would probably yell at me for crying anyway.” A tear trickled down, but it was left to freeze on her cheek. “Let’s go.”

It was the first true command Uranus felt she had ever received from her leader, and she nodded. The three turned to face the frozen wasteland together and began walking side-by-side.

–

It seemed like hours had passed (but time meant nothing in this vast emptiness, where the sky was always the same shade of grayish white and the heavenly bodies invisible) when Neptune stopped.

Her teammates both began to ask why, but she raised a finger to her lips as her eyes darted back and forth, sensing something they could not. Haruka strained to hear a noise other than the wind and her own heartbeat, but whatever Michiru had tuned into was not something that she could determine.

The next set of movements happened so fast that her brain processed them only after her body had already reacted, playing catch-up to her enhanced reflexes.

Neptune whipped to Sailor Moon and grabbed her in a tight embrace, launching them both several feet forward, vines immediately bursting from the ground where Moon had been standing. Uranus leapt backwards on instinct, catching herself with her right hand on the ground. Neptune had already released the other girl and was in the midst of attacking the vines, bright turquoise light enveloping her, when Uranus felt the ground quiver beneath her. She leapt to the side and avoided another burst of vines, countering with an attack of her own. Between them, she noticed that Sailor Moon had risen to her feet and was scanning the horizon, tiara in hand, looking for the source of the attack.

Once the two attacks had landed, the vines quickly retracted back into the frozen ground, leaving large, snaking tunnels that quickly began to fill with snow. The three soldiers stood, panting, each poised to attack again and scanning their surroundings for signs of the enemy.

“Where’d they go?” Uranus questioned after several minutes of tense silence.

Sailor Moon allowed her tiara to reappear on her forehead. “Maybe we should keep going?”

Neither of the older girls answered her question or dropped their attack stance. Another minute passed before Uranus bellowed, “Only cowards hide and attack from the shadows!” Her shout was swallowed by the wind.

Then Neptune turned to her with an expression of horror on her face, something Haruka had not seen so unmasked on her partner’s visage. But before she could ask what was wrong, Neptune had charged at her and checked her, harder than Haruka would have assumed she was capable of, so that she landed on her back in the snow a few yards away. By the time she sat up, microsecond though it was, more vines had already risen from the ground to wrap Michiru in their hideous embrace. This time, the two enemies remaining were visible as they rose into the air, Neptune struggling against the restraint of the vines.

Uranus felt her heart drop into her numb feet. She knew what came next–she had seen it happen with four girls already. She knew that Neptune was going to die because she had chosen to save her, not even the Princess this time, but her, despite the whispered promises that neither of them would do such a thing so as not to sacrifice the Mission.

Neptune went perfectly still in the vines, her eyes closed. Her hair fluttered in a gentle wind instead of being whipped by the reality of the wintry blasts, and her entire body radiated that same light that always accompanied one of her attacks.

“Neptune- _Michiru,_ don’t–”

 _“Deep Submerge,”_ she intoned, the words quiet but furious, her eyes snapping open as she stared down the closest enemy. The light expanded and encompassed those hanging in the sky before slamming into the ground with enough force to shatter it, forming a crater in the earth with Neptune laying at the center. 

The enemy that had been closer to her had been crushed by the pressure of the deep ocean and lay flat, vines having retreated into its shoulders, leaving only a skinned husk of a corpse.

“Damn you,” ground out the remaining enemy, her vines constricting Michiru until she began to scream as they cut through her uniform and began to saw into her flesh.

“No!” The cry came from behind her, and Uranus reached out her right arm just in time to grab Sailor Moon’s ankle as she attempted to run past. “Uranus! Let go!” she screamed, attempting to wriggle away.

“Promise me you’ll finish this,” she growled, staring at the soldier in her grasp. When she didn’t get an immediate response, Uranus bellowed, _“Promise me!”_

Sailor Moon looked into her eyes, tears still falling, and nodded. Uranus released her leg and stood, the familiar yellow light already beginning to grow in her fist. She nodded. “Be seeing you, Odango.”

Uranus charged forward as Neptune stopped screaming, falling limply within her confines. She summoned every bit of strength that she had, channeling it all into her fist, and pounded it into the ground. _“World Shaking!”_ she screamed, loud enough that her voice broke, as she let the power course through her and release, the ground shattering where she touched it.

She heard the last enemy scream as the attack ripped through her, the vines retreating from Neptune’s corpse as Uranus dove for it, grasping her hand tightly.

There was no time to ask questions, no time to check on a result she already knew deep within, before the ice burst forth from the ground and Uranus felt herself being rocketed upwards. She refused to relinquish her grip, though, and she was able to keep her hold until the ice stopped its rapid growth.

Neptune lay still and broken, like a beautiful doll, really, if you didn’t look below her neck to see the jagged strips of fabric hanging from her uniform, the blood staining its edges where her skin had been sliced into. Her expression was calm and peaceful, and Uranus wondered if she was happy where she was, and if she was going there, too.

Her vision had begun to tunnel, so she closed her eyes and imagined that the two of them were on a beach somewhere, laying in the sand, holding hands as they watched the waves. The screaming wind almost sounded like a roaring ocean, she thought, and she smiled slightly.

Despite being encased in ice in the middle of a frozen wasteland, Haruka felt warm.


End file.
